Multiple Criteria Decision Analysis

All their suppliers range from small farming cooperatives to multinational corporations . They consider factors such as capacity, quality and cost when selecting companies to buy from. In addition, seek only to work with suppliers that can consistently meet standards and specifications and

When you’re choosing a supplier, you’re not just choosing a particular product, but the people who push that product as well. Issues or late shipments are inevitable, but when those things happen, you want to feel confident that you’re working with professionals that will solve things quickly.

It is quite challenging to discuss about procurement management without stating the importance of its strategies. There are four main basic procurement strategies that serve different functions within a procurement management. To begin with, a “Partnership” strategy focuses mainly on constructing mutual commitment in long term relationship with suppliers. While a “Secure Supply” strategy aims to secure short and long term supply while reducing risk from suppliers. In addition, a “Category Management and E-Procurement solutions” serves as a tool to reduce logistic complexity, improve operational efficiency, and attempts to reduce the number of suppliers. Lastly, a “Competive Bidding” strategy emphasizes on obtaining the “Best Deal” for short term transactions with suppliers.(van weele) Each of these four strategies involves a unique purchasing methodology, which implies that the complexity is embedded in an individual strategic implication. Therefore, it requires different tools to accomplish the specific strategical characteristics. A business entity may need to support and execute procurement decisions with other strategic apparatus with analytical methods, including market analysis, uncertainty analysis, price forecasting, supplier relationship and along with others.(Harvard)

The purpose of this case is to familiarize the student with the conflicts between price, service, time, and quality that occur when selecting a source.  Selecting satisfactory suppliers is one of procurement's major responsibilities, and when done correctly, can lead to optimal trade-offs between the four conflicting factors in a purchase decision.

Selecting qualified suppliers can be a tough job in today's marketplace. There are many organizations that make themselves sound appealing who do not produce the agreed upon terms of service. It can be difficult to find a new supplier and it can be a very time consuming task. Having a good database of resources can make life a lot easier with this part of the job. It also helps to plan visits to a few top potential suppliers to see how they operate internally. It is also useful to request product samples to examine and test. Not only that, it is important to check references. This can shed light on things that the company would not disclose such as poor customer service or frequent delayed deliveries. For a successful and long-ranging collaboration we demand from our suppliers are market-driven Terms, quality, cost transparency,

Once you have figured out what type of supplier you need, it is time to source the right supplier within that category.

How suppliers’ perceptions and your bargaining position affect your supply strategy. This focuses on suppliers’ perceptions, the effect on supplier relationship, reverse marketing, trade-offs between switching costs.

The decision to choose a product or service from an external supplier or vendor is referred to as outsourcing. The decision to outsource a product or service is a significant one, and the Project Manager must take into consideration additional costs, changes to schedule, deliverables, and value. Furthermore, there are also other decision-making factors, such as the need for control over the quality, proprietary technology, time constraints, and lack of expertise or limited capabilities of the external supplier (Project Management Institute, 2013). From a financial and scheduling standpoint, the decision is straightforward, as the success of the project is dependent on resources available through outsourcing. Since the project is dependent on an outside entity, the Project Manager must follow prudent measures to control the process. The first step in controlling the process is to determine the appropriate acquisition process. One reliable process is known as Performance-Based Acquisition (PBA). Performance Based Acquisition (PBA) is a results-oriented contracting method that focuses on outputs, and is written so that payment or contract extension is based on measurable performance. The main benefit of using PBA is to minimize costs, while improving vendor performance (NIGP, 2012). It is paramount that diligent research and evaluation methods are used to ensure that the best available vendor is

Definition: A systematic procedure based on thinking patterns used to make choices in the hopes that they are good ones. It involves considering the Elements of a good choice and weighing them against your MUSTS/WANTS and any risks before making a final decision: The book is full of mumbo jumbo on this, but it isn't rocket science. We do some decision analysis almost every time we take a course of action.

Multi-Criteria decision making (MCDM) is an area of Artificial Intelligence which provides capabilities to assess complex decision problems. The decisions can depend on our preferences of some criteria over others.

The major concern when evaluating new suppliers for Avon would be their reliability in ensuring that materials are provided in time, in the right quantity and cost, and expected quality, as well as their knowledge of the market.

When you have a complex supply chain, supplier evaluation and reduction is a great step that can be taken towards having a lean supply chain. Supplier evaluation and reduction is a continuous process within organizations and forms part of the pre-qualification step within the supply chain management process, although in many organizations it includes the participation and input of other departments and stakeholders. Most organizations experienced in collecting supplier evaluation information prefer doing so using five-step processes for determining which supplier to approve or reject. Their processes often take the form of either a questionnaire or interview, sometimes even a site visit with each supplier, and includes appraisals of various aspects of the supplier 's business including capacity, financials, quality assurance, organizational structure and processes and performance. Based on the information obtained via the evaluation, a supplier is scored and either approved or not approved as one from whom to procure materials or services. In many organizations, there is an approved supplier list (ASL) to which a qualified supplier is then added. If rejected the supplier is generally not made available to the assessing company 's procurement team. Once approved, a supplier may be reevaluated on a periodic, often annual, basis. The ongoing process is defined as supplier performance management.

There are several methods to solve multi-criteria decision-making problems. Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Analytic Network Process (ANP) are two methods created by Tomas Saaty. AHP endeavor to solve the decision making problem by formed it in a hierarchy while ANP is used when the problem is so complex that cannot be formed as a hierarchy. This complexity happens because of the effect of criteria between each other or the effect of alternatives on criteria. Generally we can say The Analytic Network Process is a generalization of the Analytic Hierarchy Process. The ANP approach can be comprises in to four steps [87]:

This will help you to define your business requirements and plan the supplier selection process.

Haque Confectionaries is part of the Haque Brothers Industries Limited operating in Bangladesh for over 64 years. They focus on the production of quite a few biscuit brands based on different flavours and also a good range of wafers (Haque Group of Industries, 2012). Initially they used to import their raw materials, especially fruit syrups and flavours from abroad. One of their most popular products is the strawberry wafer and also some of their biscuits and candies are based on the flavor of strawberry. As such, one of their biggest imports is the strawberry syrup. Recently, the strawberry research in Bangladesh has come up with a breed